Millions of people suffer from a weakened or damaged heart resulting in impaired cardiac output. For example, some people may suffer from dilated cardiomyopathy resulting in a thinning, weakened ventricular heart wall. The weakened heart wall may not be able to pump blood efficiently. Other people may have gaps from a misalignment in the heart valve leaflets resulting in regurgitation. Regurgitation of the heart valve may also result in less efficient pumping of blood. Still other people may suffer damage to the ventricular heart wall from ischemia or a myocardial infarction. The damaged heart wall usually heals by fibrosis, with nonfunctional connective scar tissue replacing the lost cardiac cells (conductile or contractile). The loss of heart cells and replacement by scar tissue is a suboptimal repair. This typically results in a condition where the heart may not be able to pump blood efficiently. Any of these diseases may result in impaired cardiac output.
Current methods of treating heart diseases, such as those mentioned above, and others, can be highly invasive. Invasive treatments may include, for example, implanting an artificial heart pump, or coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) requiring open-chest surgery. The treatments often require pharmacologic intervention with cardiac drugs. Ultimately, such treatments may lead to less than optimal clinical outcomes, achieving only minimal improvement in cardiac output for the patient. What is needed is a way to repair a heart in a minimally-invasive manner, leveraging and amplifying intrinsic repair mechanisms.